


The Moment I Knew

by GoldStarGrl



Series: Tough Girl [2]
Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe – Gender Flip, Gen, Internalized Misogyny, Season 3 Spoilers, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28653855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: There’s a fact Jenny remembers from high school, the rare time science caught her attention senior year. Snakes are one of the few species in nature that don’t have different names for the males and females.(the sequel toTough Girl's What I Had to Be.)
Series: Tough Girl [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099898
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	The Moment I Knew

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Please read the first piece in this series or this will make no sense.
> 
> 2) This one goes out to my best friend of many years, who actually did earn her black belt when we were teenagers as the only girl in a karate class full of dudes, and most recently used this skill set to punch her husband in the throat because she was drunk and thought he was a burglar.

**i.**

When Jenny is in high school, something terrifying happens.

All the other Cobras – her best friends, her _brothers –_ start getting bigger than her. 

Taller, broader shoulders, stronger grips. At first she ignores it, figures it’s temporary. The five of them have all grown in stops and starts since they were white belts, passing and catching up with each other throughout middle school. 

But the health teacher says most girls reach their adult size by the eighth grade and Jenny tries not to let her mouth drop open in horror. She seems to have topped out at five-five, a hundred and thirty pounds of compact muscle. And they just don’t _stop_. Even _Tommy_ passes her. 

People think she’s a gymnast, or maybe a really dedicated soccer player. They don’t see a fighter, when they look at Jenny. 

Dutch knocks her on her back during a practice match one day when they’re sixteen, his forearm pressing down on her windpipe, hard, and for the first time she’s not strong enough to push him off. 

Strands of his towhead hair catch the fluorescent lights above them, a blinding white-yellow blur that seems to get darker around the edges the longer she goes without breathing.

_He could kill me, if he wanted to. He should, I’m weak._

“Point,” the black flag goes up, but Dutch doesn’t retreat, just breathes heavily on top of her, eyes too bright, nearly manic. Sensei Kreese watches quietly, and she hears the message loud and clear. 

_You got yourself into this mess, get yourself out._

Jenny’s skin is crimson, for reasons that have nothing to do with the lack of air. She slithers, uses her superior – _for now_ – speed to lurch to the left and out of Dutch’s grip. While he’s twisting to his side, she punches him in the face, hard enough to burst a blood vessel on his cheek. She gets the next point, and the one after that, but something has changed in the air. 

The past four years of proving herself the most vicious and merciless, gone in one weak moment. Everyone sees her hips and the long blonde braid plaited down her back, sees the _her,_ and all the things that _hers_ like Jenny Lawrence can be subjected to.

Sensei Kreese holds her back after class, sighs up at the ceiling while she stands at attention, stretching her neck as tall as she can manage.

“I was concerned this might happen,” he says, and his tone is neutral, mild, but she burns with the shame of failure anyway. “You’re not going to be able to keep up with the men on brute strength. That’s just a fact of nature, Ms. Lawrence.”

Panic courses through her traitorous body. He can’t make her quit, he _can’t,_ Cobra Kai is the best, most important thing to ever happen to her. She works three times as hard as all the boys, she does everything she’s supposed to and more. 

He looks up, regards her and her rigid body. “So, we’re going to have to get creative.”

They work on escape tactics, feints, ways to distract men until it’s too late, and she’s jumped on their back, or knocked them off their feet before they can get their full weight pressing down on her and end everything. 

“You have to think four steps ahead, not two,” Sensei tells her, the third time he’s got her pinned, gasping for air. “You give them the chance, and they _will_ beat you. You _will_ lose. Are you a loser, Ms. Lawrence?”

She clamps her hands down hard on top of his, giving her enough leverage to turn and push him off.

“No, Sensei!”

She’s still a champion, just has to find another way to get there.

He smirks, slaps her thigh. “Again.”

She stays so late the entire parking lot clears out and the restaurant across the street closes. The cool night air feels good on her sweaty skin as Sensei Kreese walks her to the door, tells her to be back before school tomorrow, so they can get in another two hours of training for the tournament season.

She’s so grateful she wants to hug him, but she’s never seen a guy do that in all her years at Cobra Kai, and she’s not going to go out of her way to make herself seem different and weak. 

So she bows, the way she always does, and tries not to think about the way Kreese’s hand lingers on the small of her back before he dismisses her.

**ii.**

“I had to tell him,” Bobby says, dodging the Coors bottle Jenny whips at his head. “You’ve been avoiding his calls for weeks, bailed on his kid’s christening. He thought you were pissed at him. Or _dead._ ” 

“If only,” Jenny looks for another can to throw, but the asshole’s cleaned all the alcohol out of her apartment like some kind of narc.

She did feel bad about the church thing, but even her baggiest t-shirts were no longer enough to hide her...situation, and she couldn't bear the idea of the guys laughing, the _wait you sleep with dudes now?_ (only once, which was apparently all it fucking took) and _how fucking drunk were you, Jen?_ (about two shots of Fireball from needing her stomach pumped.)

“I still can’t believe you cracked. I thought priests were supposed to be good at confidentiality."

She’d woken up to a massive cardboard box on the stoop of her apartment, sealed with white hockey tape. On the top, Jimmy had scrawled _YOU FUCKER!_ in Sharpie, followed by a smiley face.

It was full of all the crap he and his wife had bought when they’d gotten pregnant with their son the year before. Girlie maternity dresses and DVDs on Lamaze breathing she didn’t have the hardware to play in her apartment. Onesies, soft-footed pajamas, in a dozen shades of soft blue and green. How many clothes did one of these things need? It’s not like babies had places to go.

“A child is a blessing, not a bad thing, man,” Bobby sits down on the arm of her couch, stance open and warm, like she’s one of his youth group kids. “You know we got your back, all of us.”

“Right, forgot Jesus school taught you about parenting."

“When the time comes, you’re going to crush it.”

Fluttering started somewhere near her navel. _He’s kicking_. A recent development that freaked her out every time it happened. She almost put her hand on her stomach to feel it in her fingertips, like she did alone in bed at night, marveling at the fact that this complete catastrophe of a situation was creating a fighter.

Then she caught her reflection in the black screen of her television. The men’s jeans she’d had to get at Wal-Mart because none of hers fit anymore, the old, stained Zebra shirt. Blonde hair scraggly and dry at the ends from months without a haircut. Split ends that would’ve driven Laura crazy.

Laura. 

She wasn’t like Laura, or Jimmy’s wife. She didn’t wear delicate dresses or know how to shop for a nursery or breathe like a hippie. She had sloppy sex in dark bar bathrooms, with babes who didn’t give her their real numbers. She thought crying was for pussies and drank too much and she wasn’t right, wasn’t enough, again. 

Jenny balls up her fist, lifting it as far from her body as she could. “Crush it, huh?”

Bobby smiles. “Yeah. You’re the champ.”

When Robby is a few hours old, his dad shows up at the hospital, sweaty and hungover, asking if he can hold him, and the relief is so strong she almost passes out. 

Someone else can do this, take the reins, make the choices. He’s a guy, can do guy shit with Robby the right way. And even if he doesn’t, he’ll be praised for whatever minimum he manages, not like her, moms are always on the precipice of an unforgivable fuck-up in other people’s eyes. 

Jenny is someone’s _mom._

_You got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out._

She can’t hand him off fast enough.

  
  


**iii.**

Thirty years and so many lost fights later, she’s back on the mat at Cobra Kai, in a stupid white-and-black dress she panicked and bought for the Christmas party because Ali Mills invited her, and she'll never stop wanting to be the girl Ali Mills wants to kiss under the bleachers after soccer practice.

Her son is lunging at her, eyes bright with the same rage and helplessness that filled her at that age.

Except this time, she was the one who caused it. 

_I can’t be my own worst enemy. But you can!_

She lifts her leg on reflex when Robby tries to sweep it, the dodging techniques she spent most of high school perfecting to compensate for her stupid, tiny woman frame. He’s not that tall, in the grand scheme of things, but he’s bigger than her. Hitting that same age when Bobby and Dutch and everyone else she used to triumph over outpaced her, by virtue of random testosterone. 

“I’m not gonna fight y–” he punches her in the face, and she throws her forearms up to block the next one, and the one after that, as he pushes her across the length of the mat like someone trying to win a game of chess through aggression, not skill. 

He's so upset he's getting sloppy.

Jenny knows he can do better. She remembers the feeling of him kicking inside her. Remembers seeing him swing at Miguel, Danielle watching him from the other end of the competition mat, hands on her hips, eyes wide and rapt. Like they were both thinking the same thing; how had Jenny Lawrence made something so amazing, so powerful?

Her kid could kill her, if he wanted to. She wouldn't blame him, she's had it coming for a long time.

She pushes him quick, hard, just to create enough space between them that she can dodge away, but Robby’s feet weren’t planted, and she _throws_ him. His head hits the corner of the storage lockers before her mind has even caught up to what her body did. 

“ _Shit_.”

There’s a fact Jenny remembers from high school, the rare time science caught her attention senior year. Snakes are one of the few species in nature that don’t have different names for the males and females. 

A cobra is just a cobra. 

Robby is crumpled on the floor, a red gash splitting the smooth skin on his forehead. She runs to his still body, but doesn’t get down to touch him. Being on her knees is a terrible move, when she can hear Kreese moving behind her, coming back to life, and she needs to stay ahead, get creative. 

She’s not a man, and she sure as shit isn’t a mom to Robby. She’s a Cobra.

_You got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out._

“This isn’t the way I wanted this to end,” Kreese says, rising to his feet, skin turning purple and red. 

Jenny sets her eyes on the sai swords hanging on the wall, and lunges.


End file.
